The business of art continues, and I haven’t changed my opinion. In fact, I hate it more! For three days I’ve had artwork waiting on my drawing board, but for three days I’ve been sitting by this screen, researching answers and designing shopping carts. The problems now are integrating our shopping cart with my Authorize.net gateway. Two months ago I had no idea what a gateway was, now I’m getting to know the monster inside and out! One positive note here, Merchant Wharehouse and their partner, Authorize.net have been very helpful and Authorize.net has literally spent hours with me on the phone, making suggestions and working through problems. Their customer service reps were knowledgeable and literate-and U.S. based. My worst hold time was four minutes! I’m a BIG fan of customer service!
The latest concerns that have held up the launch of the store are communications between the site and Credit Card banks, and a problem I hadn’t expected-European buyers! We put the store live for a few minutes on Monday, but that was enough time to attract our first shopper from Great Britain. Free shipping overseas would break the bank, and calculating shipping is virtually impossible because of the vast variety of shippers, packages and destinations. I’m still working on the problem, but because we won’t generate huge overseas volume I’m having serious problems opening up to the world at this point. The store is now created and ready to go live, and if the communication problem can be resolved tonight it should go live tomorrow. I’ve often spoke about the false impression that athletes live a glamorous life-well, neither do working artists! This will be my fourth 18 hour day in a row-and yes, my webmaster is also working right now! It’s 11 p.m., my wife is in St. Louis and I’m about to go for a bike ride and get some excersize under tonight's full moon.
Then I’ll get back to work!
